Iuka MS to Fulton MS - First day going down the Tombigbee.

Today we changed rivers.  Actually we switched off the Tennessee River and on to the Tombigbee waterway.  
The waterway isn't so much a river as a ditch and a bunch of dams that have backed water up in valleys.
The entire point of the waterway is to connect the Tennessee River with the Tombigbee River and eventually allow navigation to Mobile Alabama.  This avoids the lower Mississippi River.  
Mobile is our eventual destination where we will hit saltwater and we are getting closer and closer.  Today we did three of the final 12 locks that are required to get to the ocean.  Included the biggest drop of 82 ft in a single lock.  

Once we reached the Pickwick Dam it is all downhill from there...   

After our third lock we drove to the fourth lock and have anchored nearby so we can do the lock early in the morning.  There is a large gap below the next lock that is unfriendly to anchoring and has no services.  We figured we'll do that starting in the morning so we don't end up stuck between locks in the dark.  Our boat buddies have done all this before and are on their second loop.  Last year they had to drive in the dark for hours until they got to an Anchorage and that was very uncomfortable.  

So today we reached the Anchorage early and it was beautiful and sunny and warm for the first time this week while we were at anchor.  It was a perfect time to try out the new dinghy.   
While the dingy motor isn't broken in yet we can run it at low RPMs for the first few hours.   They gave us a chance to take some friends for a ride and make it easy to get between boats.   I still have some rigging to figure out for lifting the dinghy more easily.  Right now the pulleys require a lot of effort and sometimes the hands get pinched in the middle of the rope and that's not at all comfortable.   Rope burns are no fun.  

I might eventually make a Harbor freight visit and get one of those little winches that is driven by a drill and use that to pull the dinghy up.  I actually have two or three of those at home in the barn... But that's not really convenient when you're in southern Mississippi.  
One thing I think he is really good for is making trips around your boat and seeing your own boat from a different perspective.   Seeing it with the reflection in the water like that makes it even look nicer...

We talk about looping as a lifetime at 8 mph.  We try to go 10 mph but it really doesn't work because you end up sitting waiting in a lot of places...  So sometimes we go 10 miles per hour and other times faster when a lock says hurry up and get here and I'll let you through on this passage.. 

You can see the places we traveled more quickly (and burned lots of fuel) because the track is in yellow at those spots... 

You don't get days in November any better than today.... Mid '70s and t-shirt and shorts were in order for most of the day.  

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